


set 'em up joe

by CallicoKitten



Category: Blade Runner (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen, Post-Movie(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:37:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: He thinks. He feels. Or maybe not.





	set 'em up joe

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write something more eloquent but i wrote this instead

He’s never really considered the way snow feels as it melts against his skin before. That little burst of cold, then damp, then nothing. His fingers are starting to go numb, his hands will follow.

He thinks of how it will feel to be warm again, all those nights he came home late, soaked to through with blood and rain and beyond cold. He thinks of that warm, clumsy way his hands feel as the blood rushes back into them, the way he’s often certain they must be hot to touch, burning even, but of course they aren’t. They aren’t.

He thinks. He feels. Or maybe not. Maybe this is all just Dr Stelline. Maybe it always has been. Synthetic synapses transferring data, ones and zeroes, a binary code written carefully, lovingly and packaged as standard across all new replicants.

Does it matter? Is it any less real?

He closes his eyes.

K was a good detective, always did what he was told. He doesn’t know who Joe was. Joe was a man who was born not made, a man with strings of dna, a man with a soul. K is not that man. Never was.

This is it. He is supposed to die. Die for the cause. _Their_ cause. _His_ cause.

He breathes out.

\---

There is a light pressure on his shoulder. “You dead, kid?” Deckard asks, prodding him with his boot.

His thoughts are coming sluggishly now. When he opens his eyes, it takes a moment for the world to form against the bright white. “Thought I was,” he manages. “’Sposed to be.”

Deckard rolls his eyes. “ _Christ_ ,” he says. “You wanna die?”

He can’t even begin to process that. Does he? Is it death if he was never really alive in the first place? He blinks up at Deckard. Deckard shakes his head.

“Alright Little Matchbox Girl, let’s get you patched up.”

\---

On the shuttle he drifts. Joe. K. Whoever he is.

Deckard had set the little wooden horse on his chest like an afterthought, met his gaze and grumbled, “She thought I should keep it for the time being. You know, until she’s ready to be let out.” His fingers linger, smoothing over the wood. “She wanted me to thank you for finding it.”

There are things he wants to say to Deckard about the horse, things that make him feel like he’s coming apart at the seams, like the crack of Joi’s emitter, like the crashing of waves over and over. Like the sound of rubber soles on decades old metal, the scent of smoke and rust and decay.

What was it Freysa had said? _We all hoped it was us._

He tries to picture it, every replicant he has ever met, Mariette with her peach hair and wide blue eyes, Luv with her sharp angles and dead eyes, tries to picture them all as a small defiant child, fists balled up, running through a long dead factory. Hundreds of children, hundreds of horses. Thousands.

 _I knew you were special,_ Joi said, over and over again.

He swallows. Deckard shuts the doors and slides into the passenger seat.

\---

In his dreams, he is K. Good little tin soldier. Joshi points. K shoots.

 _You’ve never seen a miracle,_ Sapper Morton says before he crashes K through a wall.

Joi tuts. “I told you to play nice,” she says. “Now look at the mess you’ve made.”

 _Says what you want to hear,_ the words flicker in bright neon against his eyes. Joi-Not-Joi tilts her head seductively.

“What do you want to hear, baby?” she croons. Her hands are on his cheek, in his hair. They flicker – hologram. “You’re special? Is that it? You’re a real boy?”

_The new models don’t run._

“Because you’ve never seen a miracle.”

\---

He wakes up numb and warm, his side is sticky-wet with blood, with glue. They’re airborne. He tries and fails to sit up. From the driver’s seat, Deckard glances back at him briefly.

“Where’re we going?” The words are clumsy.

“I’m going back for my dog,” Deckard says, like it’s obvious.

 _That’s stupid,_ he wants to say. _Predictable._ But Deckard’s not going to listen so what’s the point?

“So,” Deckard begins. “You figured out what you want to do next?”

The silence stretches.

“Joe.” He prompts.

K flinches.

“That’s not my name.”

Deckard snorts. “I told you, kid. I’m not using your serial number.”

His head is swimming. He closes his eyes again.

“Replicants have numbers,” K says. “People have names.”

Deckard sighs.

\---

He wakes up in Vegas. The eerie orange hurts his eyes, the silence presses. A cold wet nose presses into his palm.

He pulls his hand away instinctively. The dog whines.

Somewhere, Deckard whistles. The dog leaves, his claws clack against the floors.

He sits up. Deckard is across the room, doesn’t look over at him.

“You patched me up,” K says.

“I can see why they made you a Blade Runner, kid,” Deckard says. “Don’t miss a thing, do you?”

K tilts his head, feels his injuries out. They’re most healed. The glue is holding. Synthetic skin repairs itself fast. He’s on a long low couch, Deckard’s bent over the bar reading something, the dog is at his feet. The little wooden horse is on a side table beside him.

“I thought it was me,” he says.

Deckard looks up then, brow furrowed. He follows K’s gaze. “Oh.”

K reaches out, lifts it gently, touches the wood. He remembers turning it over and over in his hands, clutching it tightly, wrapping it up and hiding it so no one could ever take it away from him.

It sounds stupid to say it out loud.

“All the best works of art have something of the artist in them,” he repeats.

Deckard’s jaw is tight.

“I thought it was me,” K says again. “We all did. She put it in us so we’d hope.”

On the bar, Deckard’s hand curls into a fist. “I need a drink. You want one?”

K sets the horse back down.

The dog’s ears perk up at the quiet little clunk. He trots back over. K lets his hands move of their own accord, reaches out and curls his fingers through the dog’s thick fur.

“Joe?”

“Is he real?” K asks again.

“I don’t know,” Deckard says. “Honestly, kid, I don’t think it matters anymore. Now do you want a drink or what?”

“Sure,” Joe says.


End file.
